$\begingroup$Not sure if it is what you are asking, but ctrl-6 on my mac gives a shortcut to raise something to a power. I have to use the arrow keys to move from that to the "normal" line of the equation. The "6" is the up carrot so if you are using a PC, there is probably an equivalent using the key with the up carrot.$\endgroup$
– Mark RFeb 7 at 23:02

$\begingroup$I have windows, I can do that too with ctr-6. If I create 5^(2) I get 25 instead of 20.$\endgroup$
– nilo de roockFeb 8 at 8:08

$\begingroup$@niloderoock I don’t understand what you’re looking for. It isn’t clear what you’re trying to shortcut to what. Can you provide a little more context, maybe what the definition of this shortcut should be?$\endgroup$
– CA TrevillianFeb 9 at 4:21

$\begingroup$Mma has the function FactorialPower which handles this. I am mainly concerned about the formatting / notation. - I am now investigating the Notation Package but that is not an easy package.$\endgroup$
– nilo de roockFeb 9 at 8:19

$\begingroup$So Notation is not necessary after all.$\endgroup$
– nilo de roockFeb 11 at 13:25

$\begingroup$At the end of the day I want to be able to switch between normal exponents, falling exponents and rising exponents. To start with, I would like ( in "a falling exponents mode" ), x^2-x to display as x^(2). - Could this be the reason why initially Notation was suggested? I hoped the Notation[ _ <=> _] would be able to do this.$\endgroup$
– nilo de roockFeb 11 at 13:42

$\begingroup$How can I add FunctionExpand after FactorialPower ? I want (x+5)^(3) to evaluate to (x+5)(x+4)(x+3) ; FactorialPower as a name should never appear.$\endgroup$
– nilo de roockFeb 11 at 13:25

1

$\begingroup$You can add a layer of RowBox[{FunctionExpand,"["...,"]"}] around the FactorialPower inside MakeExpression.$\endgroup$
– QuantumDotFeb 11 at 16:24

$\begingroup$I found it very hard to choose which answer to accept, sorry.$\endgroup$
– nilo de roockFeb 24 at 8:08

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